Center for Development of Humanistic Ecology and Culture
Center for Development
of Humanistic Ecology and Culture
RuEnDe
Anthropological Charter

Solidarity and justice

Despite all progress, inequality continues to increase worldwide. A tiny class of super-rich individuals expand their assets while the bulk of the population become poorer.

Globalization has turned into the endless competition to attract investment by cost-reduction, i. e. by lowering the cost of labor and reducing social expenditures. Entire regions of the world become trapped in a process of social and economic degradation, and the result — mass migration — further weakens their potential to develop.

If the present vectors of global policy remain unchanged, an ever larger portion of the population will excluded from active participation in the economy. Even in the prosperous countries, increasing numbers of citizens are being transformed into "useless ballast", as more and more jobs are filled by imported laborers having no legal rights, and plans for robotization hold the perspective of eliminating human beings from the labor process altogether. Under these conditions various forms of racism threaten to spread into society, targeting especially the most vulnerable and defenseless groups of the population, such as handicapped persons, women and refugees.

Faced with these dangers, the world needs new strategies for economic and social development. It needs strategies which are not based on the primacy of the strong and the subservience of the weak, but rather on solidarity and equality — on the ability to share the burdens of life together with others; to provide a worthy place in society for each individual human being, and an equitable distribution of the products of labor. Every country has the right to adopt the economic and social system which it finds most suitable for its own development; and no country should suffer any kind of discrimination for this reason.*

* Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on May 1, 1974 (Resolution 3201 (S-VI).